Arkansas court battle over cannabis grow licenses heating up

Arkansas’ attorney general is appealing a judge’s order that forbids the state to license five companies to grow medical marijuana.

Attorney General Leslie Rutledge’s office on Friday filed a notice that it’s appealing Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen’s ruling that the MMJ licensing process is unconstitutional to the state Supreme Court.

Griffen had ruled that the state’s process for licensing the companies violated the 2016 voter-approved amendment legalizing marijuana for patients with certain medical conditions.

The judge sided with an unsuccessful applicant that had sued the state over the process.

Griffen cited potential conflicts of interest by two members of the Medical Marijuana Commission and other problems with the licensing process.

The appeal could actually harm the state’s MMJ licensing process, an advocate told Marijuana Business Daily.

“Even if the Supreme Court overturns the judge’s order, there’s going to be some insecurity regarding the process,” Arkansas marijuana attorney David Couch said.

He had been pushing the attorney general not to appeal and instead suggested the commission have the applications reviewed by a third party.

We were connected with a group who applied for a license and while we are not sueing and accepted the scoring, we also felt like there was no reason to give one company 3 of the 5 licenses. Even if they had a terrific application, it makes no sense to help them have a greater monopoly on the market and allow them to apply multiple times. With one large facility they can make all the products they need to supply the limited 32 stores they prescribed to have. Plus they were allowed up to 8 winning applications, so why not have four other companies and still allow the one company to have three if they really wanted that? It also did not help that all the winners seemed to have political connections and were financial contributors to state politics. When I saw the final scoring numbers my first thought was that this could easily be heading to court. I’m sad for the medical patients of Arkansas who are the real losers in this process. Hope they can get this figured out for them as quickly as possible.

If this was a situation that was going to be beneficial to police, state officials, ect. this process would have already been in motion. This should not take this long. Why is the state of Arkansas so stubborn? Why not model the programs after other successful states programs?

Why is arkansas making money off of a program that they have not even tried to implement yet, who’s pockets is all this money going in… c’mon we got sick people dieing out here cause of a few crooks criminals and theives trying to grt richer off of sick people you bunch of jerk offs, the court can hold this up for year’s.. really, really are you kidding me other states have taken about 18 months to implement their programs..the real money come when the program is implemented not before.. get with the program folks

This is really sad. It is all about money and not the patients with chronic pain or other qualifying conditions. All the other states are up and running but not Arkansas. The patients in Arkansas have to suffer while asses are being dragged. Get it together this is not a good look ppl.

Because they were trying to keep that money in Arkansas. They wanted only Arkansans to get that money and it cost US. The PATIENTS. Those people could care less how long it takes. They just want that money to stay in Arkansas.

Do We the people need to get together and go to Little Roc?……… What happends if a person’s lease is up where they’re staying??? Even people who are waiting on cards with 2-year leases are ALMOST up. It’s like the state of Arkansas is holding us hostage. They have our money. What can we do??? Arkansas won’t even send updates to patients approved for Medical marijuana. We get NO notifications but……..they have our money!!!!. If ANYBODY wants to get a group together to go visit and voice our opinion of this hot mess???? Count me in. Louisiana has already given out their cultivation license. They will be up and running before Arkansas and Arkansas started the program before Louisiana did. Louisiana did it RIGHT and got a OUTSIDE agency to pick. Guess that’s Arkansas for you!!!! What a state I live in!!!! Nice going Arkansas!!!!!